I would often talk excitedly about some project we completed that was on time and had good results. Folks would say "yeah, we did that too." In my naive enthusiasm, I would pepper them with questions on what they did and how they did it. I would get horrified looks and then they would flee. I would come to discover that too many of those other on time projects were more noise than substance. How could a simple notion such as "on time" be so complicated?"

I talk a lot about "on time" as being a project management tool. This might strike many as backwards. Normally we figure if we do a good job then we will deliver on time. I maintain that often, more often than one would suspect, we can figure out what "on time" looks like and then squeeze the project into that period of time.

Your development team is telling you it will take 24 weeks to do product development. You only have 20 weeks to your product launch window. After that, the product won't be competitive. What does a good project manager do?

This post is adapted from an e-mail I had sent to a CEO who was looking for project management tools to help deliver his products when promised. In the past his organization had successfully been able to know precisely where their product readiness stood. Trending defects will work well in managing projects of all types.

Project management tools and techniques help us to do the job we need to do. Yet, the tools can often become overwhelming with updating them, trying to get just the right report out of them, etc. It is easy to lose track of what we are trying to achieve. Estimating a schedule is one of the most critical things we will do so let's see if we can get it right.

Honesty in project management reporting is just more efficient. Just report the status of a project as it is. If things are late, it will show things as late. If things are confused, it will show things as confused. Spending valuable time making things look better on slides than it does in reality is not productive.